Queen of Mars - Book III in the Masters of Mars Trilogy (12 page)

“It seems he has made his decision, too,”
Copernicus said.

“But he’s your dog!”

Copernicus shook his head. “Only as long as
he wanted to be. He wants someone else, now. Treat him well, your
majesty.”

Before I could protest Copernicus had closed
the door.

I looked down at the beast, whose tongue
lolled and eyes were filled with anticipation and love. I had to
admit that over these months he had, in his own strange way, helped
me heal. I shrugged, and turned to the path that led from the farm
and down the hill away from the village, to the rolling hills
beyond.

“It seems I have a dog,” I sighed.

T
he snow returned
that night in great force.

We had trudged barely five miles from the
farm when the storm hit. It was sometime after midnight, and my
horse immediately turned his flank to the wind, and I knew we were
in for it. Hector, who began to howl, tried to claw me from the
saddle but he needed no help. I climbed down as a sudden avalanche
of snow hit us. The sky had whited out, and I could not see a foot
in front of me.

“No chance to turn back, eh, boy?” I said,
hugging the shivering dog, and I yanked my horse to the right,
toward where I thought I had seen a clump of bushes.

I found the bushes by walking into them. They
were thick tacra trees, with thin denuded branches which twisted
together tightly. In the spring they would blossom with tiny red
buds, but now they formed a sheltering canopy over us, though it
was a tight fit.

As soon as we were settled Hector insisted on
running off. I saw the faint and disappearing tracks of a rabbit or
stoat, and he was compelled to investigate.

He returned some time later, mournful at his
failure to properly hunt.

“That’s all right,” I said, petting his head.
It was amazing how soothing to me the motion was. The branches
shook above us, but we were effectively in a little cave, snug if
not warm. I pulled some food from my saddlebags, and fed my two
animals and then myself. I was suddenly weary. Overhead, and not
three feet from where we sat, the storm raged, but now I spread a
blanket on the ground and curled down onto it.

In an instant I was asleep.

I
awoke to blinding
light, and remarkably refreshed. Overhead the snow caught in the
branches of the tacra tree had partially melted and then refroze
into mottled ice, throwing a prism of colors around our little
cave. I pushed past the horse, who snuffled with impatience, and
made my way outside.

The world was beautifully white.

Except by the sun, there was no way to tell
north from south, east from west. There were no discernable
landmarks. As quickly as the storm had come it had gone, leaving a
thick blanket of white on every hill and valley to all horizons. I
put my boot down into it, and estimated that nearly a foot of snow
had dropped the night before.

It would be impossible to travel cross
country with this much snow on the ground.

“Well, that’s it,” I said out loud. “We’ll
have to go back to Copernicus’s farm and take our chances.”

At that moment a tiny dot appeared in the sky
in the east, and quickly grew into an airship. It was the strange
craft I had seen over the farm these past weeks. Almost jet black
in color, it looked like a huge, sleek metal bird.

I shrank back into the mouth of my shelter
and waited for it to pass on. But, instead, when it was almost
overhead it began to circle, dropping down with each lap until I
could plainly see its unmarked surface, and the darkened windows
along its side and in its nose.

It drew lower, lower, circling like a bird of
prey, and I suddenly felt certain that it was searching for me. A
hundred thoughts flew through my brain – Copernicus had been taken
prisoner, tortured, made to give up my position and heading, Frane
had bribed and terrorized her way into finding out where I
was...

The black bird swooped lower, and now, from
its underbelly, descended long black skis in lieu of wheels, and
the bird straightened and swooped down to a landing.

I retreated to my horse and drew my weapons,
a sword to go with the dagger beneath my tunic.

I would not go without a fight, and Frane
would not have me alive.

Hector began to growl as the black bird
touched down at the far end of the valley I was in and headed
straight for me. On the ground it looked even more like a carrion
bird, its black beak pointed at me.

It churned up vast amounts of snow in its
wake and came to rest, its engines hissing down, not a hundred feet
away.

There came a mechanical whining sound, and a
door snicked open on its left side, behind the cockpit, and lowered
itself to the ground.

I stepped out of my hiding place to meet my
enemy, my sword clutched tightly in my right hand, dagger in my
left.

A figure descended the steps of the lowered
gangway, obscured for a moment by a burst of wind which threw its
tunic across its face.

I moved forward and waited.

The figure stepped to the ground and stepped
toward me.

My heart went into my throat.

I dropped my sword and dagger and began to
run, as did the other.

“Darwin!” I shouted, with every ounce of
feeling in my body. “You live!”

“I
t isn’t much of a
mystery at all,” Darwin insisted, his paw resting in both of my
own.

We were truly snug and warm, a half mile off
the ground and flying like birds ourselves. The air ship was
comfortable, but that had not kept Hector from raising holy hell
when I tried to get him on board. I would not have thought that
such a creature, weighing no more than fifteen pounds, could exert
so much backward pressure. It took Darwin, laughing madly, and me
both to push the dog into the plane, and then to keep him there. He
sat now on a seat in front of Darwin and I, making angry, sad
noises in the back of his throat and staring out the window with
his big, moony eyes.

“Why didn’t you let it be known that you had
left Wells before the concussion bomb was dropped?”

“To put it simply,” Darwin answered, in a
much more patient manner than I remembered him having – he looked
older and, yes, a bit wiser than he had the last time I saw him –
“I was on a diplomatic mission with seven senators, and had just
reached Bradbury when the bomb struck Wells. In fact, nearly half
the senate, and a third of the Assembly, survived the attack. Many
were in their home districts solidifying support for your monarchy
and preventing any repeat of F’rar defections. We thought it best
not to let Frane know just how much of the government had survived,
your majesty.”

“You must call me Clara!”

“As you know, your majesty, there are certain
proper ways of address that must be adhered to—”

I squeezed his paw. “But when we are
wed...”

He grinned. “Then you may call me King! Or
‘Mr. King’, if you like!”

I gazed into his eyes, his face, which I had
thought I would never see again.

“You must never leave my side again, Darwin,”
I said. “Consider that a royal order.”

His grin widened, and then clouded. “There
were times these past months when I thought I would never see you
again, too. And then when word reached us from Copernicus that you
were hiding in his home, and that sooner or later Frane or her
monsters would find you...” His paw, still resting in the cup of
both of my own, clenched into a fist.

“We will defeat her, Darwin,” I said. “This
time she cannot win.”

His eyes had a faraway look.

“How is Newton?” I asked brightly, to bring
him back.

Darwin sighed. “He is an old man, and has
become even older. He sees the destruction of Wells as the fault of
the Science Guild. It weighs heavily on him, and I’m afraid you may
be startled by his appearance.”

“I will try not to show it. He is a great
man.”

“Yes, and the republic may not last without
his help.”

Again he had that look as if he was in
another place.

I tightened my grip on his paw. “What is it,
Darwin? What’s wrong?”

“There are...other developments, your
majesty.”

“Tell me.”

He shook his head. “I will let Newton tell
you. It is his place.”

For the rest of the flight we talked of many
other things, some of them happy, such as our betrothal, and, of
course, our coming nuptials.

Even Hector was content, barking at a flock
of keesel birds, huge white feathered beasts with wide, deep red
beaks, flying in formation below us. The dog had finally found as
much wonder in the sky as on the ground.

T
o my great surprise
we landed not in the city of Bradbury but at the base of Arsia
Mons, the Science Guild stronghold. It seemed like five years had
passed since I’d last been here, but it had only been a matter of
months.

“Is Newton here?” I asked hopefully.

“Yes,” Darwin said, averting his eyes.

When I sought more information he would only
say, “You will see soon, your majesty.”

The drafty corridors were as I remembered
them, the various rooms the same, and when I traversed that last
passageway with Darwin by my side the same old knot in my stomach
formed.

“Must we see them?” I asked.

Darwin, his eyes still holding that strange
look, said, “It is imperative.”

Taking a deep breath, I pushed open the door
to the blue chamber and went in.

At first I thought the two daises were empty,
but then in the gloom I could just make out two ghostly figures, as
if made of blue gauze.

Then the voice of my grandmother called out,
in strong if faint tones, with the faint air of amusement they
often held, “Come close, Queen Clara.”

I nodded automatically and climbed the short
steps to stand by her.

She was smiling, but I could almost see
through her. On his own dais, my father looked even more
insubstantial, staring into nothingness.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

“We’re dying, child,” Grandmother Haydn said,
smiling sadly.

All of my fear of what they had become was
gone in an instant, and I dropped to my knees in front of her. I
tried to throw my hands around her legs by my paws went right
through the simulacrum.

“It is true,” Newton’s voice rasped from
behind me. I turned to see his face shockingly wizened and
wrinkled. He cleared his throat and coughed. “They will soon be
gone. The regenerations are no longer working, and this will be
their last time among us.”

Something broke in me, a deep well I did not
even know was there, and I began to sob.

“This cannot be!”

“Shhhh,” Grandmother Haydn soothed, and for a
moment I felt the faint touch of her paw on my head, as if a
feather had brushed across it.

I looked up and she was still smiling. I
could not stop weeping. “As much as I’ve always dreaded coming
here, I’ve always loved you! You’re all I have!”

Again I felt the feather touch of her paw,
and looked over to see my father staring at me, concentrating, a
slight smile on his face.

“It’s all right, daughter,” he said, his
voice sounding a thousand miles away. “This will be better for your
grandmother and me.”

“But you can’t go! I’ll be all alone!”

My father’s eyes flickered toward Darwin for
a moment. Again his ghostly smile. “That’s not true, Clara.”

He seemed to go away for a moment, but then
the blue cloud that held his essence slowly coalesced once
more.

“You’re my family!”

“Soon you’ll have your own family,”
Grandmother Haydn said gently. Her voice hardened, ever so
slightly. “Now act like a queen, and stand up. We have things to
discuss.”

I did so, banishing my tears.

Once again my father was staring at nothing,
a beatific smile on his face.

Even as my father weakened, my grandmother
seemed to strengthen, her form becoming more substantial.

“Newton will discuss this with you later, but
Frane is making preparations for one last battle, in the north,
near the ice cap on the plains of Arcadia Planitia. It is where she
was all along, while you fought her shadow army at Valles
Marineris. Her army is not huge, and it is a ragtag of outlaw
clans, mercenaries and criminals, most of them mad with mocra root.
She has gone mad with it herself, we are told.”

She took a deep breath and for a moment was
unable to speak, and Newton, behind me, cleared his throat and
continued, in his old man’s voice, “The good news is that at the
moment she has almost no F’rar backing. With some careful moves on
your part, there will be no insurrection from within. She is making
her last stand, your majesty. This time we can finally destroy
her.”

Something hardened within me.

“Then we will do it.”

Grandmother Haydn resumed: “There are no more
concussion bombs on all of Mars. She will fight a conventional
battle. She can be beaten.”

I saw the same hope in her own tired eyes
that I held in my breast.

“Then this will be her last battle.”

“Good.”

As if all of her strength had gone into this
meeting, she suddenly faded, looking even more insubstantial than
when I had come in.

“There is one other thing,” my father said.
Even as my grandmother faded he seemed to draw that strength to
himself.

I stood before him, and, to my surprise, he
would not meet my gaze.

“What is it, father?”

“Your mother...”

“What of her?” A sudden horrid thought came
to me. Almost desperately I asked, “I was told she survived the
attack on Wells.”

“Yes she did.”